Didn't We Almost Have It All
by starbucksgal
Summary: This is now completed. John Carter and Anna Del Amico romance, with Jing-Mei, Abby, and Mark as supporting characters. Please read and review.
1. Of Past Regrets And Future Fears

DISCLAIMER  
With the exception of Katherine Carter, none of these characters belong to me. They are the property of Warner Brothers, Constant C, Amblin Television, and Michael Crichton. I do not own the rights to any of the songs I have used in this fanfiction, nor do I have any contact with the recording artists or lyricists. I would like to thank Rhiannon Perkins and Victoria Houghton for their invaluable help, advice, and kicks up the ass, and Laura Fellowes-Prynne for patiently listening to me rant while I attempted to find a title.   
  
A/N  
This fic is set about two and a half years in the future, and starts in January 2004 with Carter as an ER attending. There are mild spoilers for all of season 7, up to Rampage. I know that Anthony Edward's contract ends in 2002, but I like Mark, and this is my fic so I can do whatever the hell I want. He's still here. For the record, in my version of events Chen took Michael back in the season finale and is back together with Frank, the ICU nurse, and Abby went back to medical school and is an OB intern.   
_________________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Of Past Regrets And Future Fears  
Elizabeth Routledge  
  
John Carter entered the lounge for the start of the graveyard shift and almost ran straight into the County General emergency fellow, who was attempting to make fresh coffee. Dropping his bag, he grinned as he surveyed the mangled filter. Deb - he never had managed to remember her Chinese name, even after so many years - Chen was one of the most talented trauma physicians he knew, the definite winner of an Oscar for over-achievement, and had even beaten him to the chief residency over two and a half years ago, but like most of the good doctors in America, was rendered useless when it came to making coffee. He knew that he was the exception rather than the rule - years of too much work to do and a sad discovery, aged nineteen with a term paper to write, that Starbucks was not open at 3am had forced him to learn how to use his grandparents' fancy coffee machine.   
  
'You look beat,' he remarked, taking the pot from her and doing the job himself.  
  
'Yeah? Wait until you have a three-year old toddler and a screaming baby at home.'  
  
'That's unlikely at this late stage.' He handed Jing-Mei her mug and added sugar to his own. 'Besides, from what I remember of my OB rotations, I believe it's strictly necessary to have a woman in order to make a baby. Seriously,' he added, spinning the dial on his locker, 'Who would I have a chance with? Besides my grandparents associates, who, by the way, I wouldn't be seen dead with, I know barely anyone outside of the hospital. You've got Frank, Abby's got Luka, Kerry's… gay…'  
  
'Rena?' Jing-Mei suggested.  
  
'Rena?' he repeated. 'Hell, I hadn't thought about her for ages.'  
  
'There was someone though, right, John? Before I came back from New York? Anne, or something.'  
  
'Anna.' She had been gone for over five years, but he had never forgotten her. 'I was in love with her, but she wasn't interested… there was someone else.'  
  
'Oh, you'll have kids, Carter.' Dr Chen smiled as she headed back into the chaos of the ER. 'I mean, you've got time. You're not exactly what I would call an old man.'  
  
No, he wasn't an old man, but Deb's words had resurfaced the past, and he spent the next few hours in kind of a mist. Anna Del Amico. He had never forgotten her, that much was true, but the first six months or so after she had left had been so painful that he had forced himself to push her to the back of his mind - Lucy had arrived not long after she had gone, he remembered, and he had been a right asshole to her for a while. He had also, if he recalled correctly, had a serious image revamp. The beard. Oh, dear God, the beard.  
  
'Ouch!' He was jerked out of his thoughts by the young guy whose blood he was attempting to draw. 'You sure you've done this before?'  
  
'Yes!' To Carter's relief, the syringe filed with blood. 'You're done.'  
  
'That's it?'  
  
'Go and sit out in chairs and I'll come and get you when your lab results come back.'  
  
'Dr Carter?'  
  
'Yes. Dr Lockhart.' Swivelling round, he was almost blinded by a flash from Abby's left hand. 'Luka finally popped the question, huh?'  
  
'Last night.' She flushed. She had had this all night upstairs. 'Someone called for an OB resident?'  
  
'Trauma two. She's fully effaced and dilated, contractions every one to two minutes. Get in there or you'll miss it. Hey, and Abby?' She turned round. 'Congratulations.'  
  
'Thanks.' She looked pleased. She and Carter had a long history, mainly of friendship, although there had been a point when he had told her that he was in love with her. Unfortunately, Luka and Carter also had a long history, mainly of animosity. It was only recently that they had begun to be civil, and had actually become quite good friends.  
  
Carter sighed and looked at his watch. Almost one. While part of him would always be undeniably attracted to her, he had given up the fight long ago, and grudgingly admitted that she had Luka were good together. Anna and Max, now, were a different story, and one that he had no great wish to pursue right now. He idly considered doing some charts, but decided to take advantage of the relative and unexpected quiet and crash in an exam room. As he closed his eyes, he tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. The fleeting thought had unleashed a torrent of questions inside his brain, and he wondered exactly why Anna Del Amico and Max Rosher were still together.  
  
He knew, of course, why he was with her. He enjoyed the power he had over her. Carter had seen that much in the two months that Max had been in Chicago. He also liked being with someone who, when he screwed up, would stick with him, take his crap, and get him into rehab. Carter knew that he couldn't exactly be judgemental on Max because of the drugs - his own rehab was a lifetime ago, but some people had never gotten over it, his parents included. But his one screw up since then had been the Vicodin, which he had thrown up immediately. That meant that he had been clean for three years. Abby may have quit being his sponsor not long after, but she was still his role model. Nine years of sobriety. As far as he could tell, Max had never really tried, but then, he may not have had the friends he had to save his ass. More than once.  
  
~~~~~~  
  
Jing-Mei Chen again checked the woman's vitals, meticulously entering her findings on the chart. There was something uncannily familiar about her daughter, and she had been trying to place it all night. As the words 'Person to be contacted in case of emergency' came into focus, so did the handwritten line beneath it. Katherine Carter (Daughter). Carter… this woman's name was Redgrave… and, as she looked more closely, the likeness clicked. Casually, she asked,  
  
'Kat, are you by any chance any relation to John Carter?'  
  
'He's my father.'   
  
'Your… your dad?' Jing-Mei asked carefully.  
  
'Yes.' The girl looked surprised. 'I never knew him. He was younger than my mom - they got drunk at a party from high school. She was a senior, he was a sophomore. She never told him she was pregnant.'  
  
Her heart pounding, the doctor tried to get herself to think rationally. There had to be a hundred John Carters in the world. But in her heart, she knew her instincts were correct. Forcing herself not to sound like she was panicking, Jing-Mei asked if she knew what he looked like, and was shown a wallet picture. That was her Carter all right - about seventeen years younger and with a really bad perm, but Carter nonetheless.  
  
'Mom says he was a good guy, that his brother died when he was just a kid, and he wanted to be a doctor so he could help people like Bobby… but she said that if he had known about me he would have thrown it all in. That's why she didn't tell him,' Kat Carter looked up at Dr Chen. 'She always said that if anything happened to her I should look for him. I guess that'll be Real Soon Now.'  
  
Jing-Mei laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. She had no idea what to say, she only knew that she had to get the hell out of there and find the guy who was, in many ways, her closest friend. Finally she said, 'I wouldn't worry about it, Kat. These things tend to have a way of working themselves out. Call me if you need anything.'  
  
As soon as she was out of the trauma room, she charged down the hall to the admit desk and asked Amira where Dr Carter was. She didn't wait around to thank the desk clerk, but stormed into exam two. Woken by her less than quiet entrance, Carter jerked upwards. He had been paged a couple of hours ago and had seen a few patients then, but had eventually crashed again about twenty minutes ago. Squinting at the clock, he saw that it was a little after four.   
  
'Something rolling up?' he asked.  
  
'We've been pretty quiet. It's starting to pick up a little now…' Seeing him, she couldn't be mad at him now. He had just been a kid, and - he hadn't known, for crying out loud! 'Carter, I have something I need to tell you.'  
  
'What?' He wondered fleetingly if she might be pregnant again.   
  
'Do you remember anyone named Julia Redgrave? You…'  
  
'Slept with her in my high school sophomore year,' he interrupted. 'Deb, it was the night I lost my virginity. I'm hardly likely to forget. I mean, I may have been drunk, but I wasn't that drunk - how do you know, anyway?'  
  
'What, uh, what happened next?'  
  
'She finished with me and went to UCLA. What is this, twenty questions?'  
  
'John, she was pregnant?'  
  
'She what?'  
  
'I'm sorry, but you were going to find out. Anyway, this girl is the image of you, and she has your last name. Someone round here would have clicked sooner or later. Julia has end stage liver cancer. She's in trauma two… Carter, the woman has hours to live, and when she dies your daughter is going to come looking for you.'  
  
'My… my daughter?' He couldn't believe he was hearing this.   
  
'Katherine. Kat. She's seventeen.'  
  
'Look, Deb, this is going to sound weird, but are you sure that this is me?'  
  
'You slept with her mother around about the time she must have gotten pregnant, she has your last name, she's the absolute double of you. Besides, she has a picture of you and she was talking about Bobby.'  
  
'God!'  
  
There was an uncomfortable silence of several minutes, which Jing-Mei broke. 'So, you had a perm?'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
Carter managed to get off his shift an hour early, and was walking into City Hall at ten past seven, ten minutes after it had opened. Managing to get quick directions from a clerk, he found himself talking to yet another clerk and asking for the birth certificate of Katherine Carter and the will of Julia Elizabeth Redgrave. Five minutes later he had them in his hands. After reading the birth certificate carefully, which verified beyond all reasonable doubt that he was her father, he turned to the last page of the will.  
  
'I leave custody of my daughter, Katherine Carter, to her father, John Truman Carter the Third.'  
  
There was more, going on about 'in the event of this person's death' and about what should be done if he couldn't be found, but Carter ignored it and blindly handed the documents back before walking outside. It was drizzling, but he needed to clear his head. He had, for the hundredth time, been trying to quit smoking, but started again on the spot. He had to tell Kat. Not wanting to find out that there had been a mistake and subsequently having to disappoint her, he hadn't said anything, and had avoided trauma two until he left at six-thirty. Pulling out his cell phone, he called Deb at the hospital. When she came on the line, he immediately said,  
  
'She's mine, and uh, Julia's leaving me custody.'  
  
Deb paused, then said quietly, 'I just called time of death. Carter… John? What are you going to do now?'  
  
He shrugged. 'What I have to do. I guess, to a certain extent, what I want to do. You know, because I missed the first eighteen years of her life and I'm sure as hell not gonna stand by and miss the rest.'  
  
'But?' she prompted.  
  
'But I'm a dad, Deb. And… and not like to a baby, when you have nine months warning, and then it's little when it comes out and it develops gradually. She's a teenager! A college student, practically. And I didn't hear anyone giving me any warnings.' He hesitated. 'Deb - I'm scared.'  



	2. Tears In Heaven

Tears In Heaven  
  
Carter rubbed his eyes and looked blearily at the glowing green of his digital alarm clock. 5:55. The alarm would be going off in five minutes. He was tired, but was also experiencing a huge sense of relief. After digging through the files at City Hall, he had gone back to County, found Kat, and told her everything. She had, he sensed, been glad that there was someone, and that she wouldn't have to start searching for her father. Three hours and a couple of marathon phone calls later, he had been granted temporary custody and she had moved into the condo in Lincoln Park. She was still quiet, withdrawn, and emotional, and Carter was just letting her be. Thankfully, for both of them, the hearing had been yesterday, and he had got full custody. It wouldn't be for long, as she was eighteen in April, but it was good to know that the legal stuff was over and done with.   
  
After the initial shock, Carter had been happy. Kat was a nice girl, and if he had had to have an almost eighteen-year-old daughter thrown at him unexpectedly, he would have chosen her. And slowly, he was learning to love her. A blast of music hit his ears. Some female singer was singing some mushy song about love, but he wasn't in the mood this morning, and fiddled with the dial until he got Grace Jones. Kerry had got him addicted to that kind of music.   
  
Rolling out of bed, he pulled on a pair of surgical scrubs and went down the hall to the kitchen. Ten minutes later he knocked on Kat's door, and a deafening blast of Nirvana greeted him as she opened it, taking the cup of black coffee. She gave him a funny look.  
  
'Weren't you on at six?'  
  
'What?' Almost on cue, the phone rang, and he said desperately. 'You get it. If it's Kerry, I'm on my way.'  
  
'No way! Let the machine get it.'  
  
'Hi, it's Carter and Kat's. We're not in right now, leave a message and we'll call you back.'  
  
'Carter, it's Luka. You're late…'  
  
'Hi.' He grabbed the phone. 'I was just screening, you know, checking you weren't Weaver. Is she in yet?'  
  
'She doesn't come on until nine.'  
  
'Okay. Uh, I'll be in in an hour. Can you cover for me?'  
  
'Sure, but hurry, okay? We're swamped.'  
  
Terrific. He ran round the apartment like a mad thing, threw a cup of coffee down his throat, and arrived at County at seven, but was lucky not to have been pulled over for speeding. He barely had time to take his coat off before finding himself with a pile of five charts and patients piled four deep in Fast Track. At noon the pace was showing no signs of letting up, but Jing-Mei managed to grab him when she came on.  
  
'How's it going?'  
  
He hesitated. 'You wanna get coffee?' Most of the hospital knew about Kat by this point, but he didn't want to have a private conversation in the middle of the lobby.  
  
'Sure,' she agreed. 'Come find me when you get a break.'  
  
'If I get a break,' he muttered savagely. Thanks to his mucking up his schedule, he had had no breakfast and hadn't got a break all morning. His stomach was beginning to growl. He went back to suturing. The faster he got it done, the sooner he got food. Eventually, at two-thirty, when he was waiting for labs on four patients and radiology on two others, he told Kerry he was going on a break and dragged Jing-Mei over to Doc Magoo's. He had scoffed a burger and salad before he spoke.   
  
'I got full custody.'  
  
'That's great… isn't it?'  
  
He shrugged. 'Yeah, it's good, but I just didn't see that it would have made that much difference - she's eighteen in three months. The good thing is that it was more or less her decision, and she said she wanted to live with me. It's a step in the right direction. Look, we get on all right, and you can't imagine how glad I am that she came into my life. She's sweet, she's intelligent, she's beautiful… she has terrible taste in music, but I can handle that. I love her, I look at her every day and can't believe that I helped to create her… but at the end of the day, I'm not her mom, and that's who she misses right now.'  
  
'It'll be okay, Carter,' she said. 'She's just dealing with it. It's kind of like you were after the attack - we all did everything we could, but we weren't Lucy.'  
  
'That's the problem, though. I don't think she is dealing with it. I've never seen her cry, not even at the funeral.'  
  
'Nobody can go on like that indefinitely. Something has to crack.' She laid her hand lightly on top of his. 'Just don't force it, okay? It'll get better.'  
  
The thing was, if anyone knew that you couldn't go on like that indefinitely, it was Carter. He had tried to, very hard, and had wound up in Atlanta. At that moment, he knew exactly how much he had come to care for Kat in the last few weeks. Three and a half years ago, he hadn't really seen anything wrong in it. It hadn't been anyone else's business. He had hurt a lot of people, and he wouldn't go down that road again for anything. He didn't want his daughter to go down it either. He was still worrying over what to do later that night when he heard music coming from her room. He went to the door, and saw Kat lying on her bed, surrounded by what looked like all the candles they possessed. Her CD player was on, and he was about to go in when he saw that she was crying, and decided that he should respect her privacy. The song started over again, and as Carter leaned against the doorframe, a tear slid down his nose.   
  
Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven?   
Would it be the same, if I saw you in heaven?  
I must be strong and carry on  
'Cause I know I don't belong here in heaven.  
  
Would you hold my hand, if I saw you in heaven?  
Would you help me stand, if I saw you in heaven?  
I'll find my way through night and day  
'Cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven.  
  
Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees  
Time can break your heart, have you begging please  
Darling please.  
  
Beyond the door, there's peace I'm sure  
And I know there'll be no more tears in heaven.  
  
~~~~~~  
  
He didn't mention it to her, but would have known in any case that something had broken inside her. The next morning, at six, when he delivered her coffee as was becoming their morning routine, she was already up and dressed.  
  
'Kat?' He rubbed his eyes. 'How long have you been up?'  
  
'An hour? I've got a term paper due today, I needed to polish it up a little.' She was noticeably more relaxed, happier, and even gave Carter a kiss on the cheek as she accepted her coffee.   
  
He knew, somehow, that things would work out okay now, and went into work - on time - a lot less worried than he had been the previous day. He was sat at admitting catching up on chart review when the phone on the desk rang. Automatically, he answered it.   
  
'ER.'  
  
'Hi, I'm calling with a message for Dr Weaver. Would you tell her that I'd be more than happy to take the job, and I'll be in Chicago ready to start work Monday. Right, my name…'  
  
With all the recent upheavals that had been going on, the last three weeks had left Carter very little time to think about his love life, or, as he now saw it, lack of one. But he would have recognized that voice anywhere. An image of a blond, leggy, Catholic paediatrician from South Philadelphia floated into his mind and he almost fell off the chair.  
  
'Anna?'  
_________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Ba-DUM. Sorry to leave you all hanging, but Chapter 3 should be up by next Sunday at the latest (June 17th). If it's not, feel free to flame me, but remember that I am still doing exams. That song in the middle was 'Tears In Heaven' by Eric Clapton.  



	3. She's The One

She's The One  
  
I was her, she was me  
We were one, we were free  
And if there's somebody calling me on  
She's the one.  
If there's somebody calling me on  
She's the one.  
  
We were young, we were wrong  
We were fine all along  
And if there's somebody calling me on  
She's the one  
  
When you get to where you wanna go  
And you know the things you wanna know  
You're smiling  
When you said what you wanna say  
And you know the way you wanna play  
You'll be so high you'll be flying  
  
Though the sea will be strong  
I know we'll carry on  
'Cos if there's somebody calling me on  
She's the one  
If there's somebody calling me on  
She's the one.  
  
  
It was a long, slow night in the ER, and Carter was getting edgy. He glanced at the board - empty, the door - no activity there either, and checked his watch for the hundredth time. Her shift didn't start for another half-hour. They hadn't talked for long, but she had made it clear that she wanted this to be a surprise - to everyone except him and Kerry. Now, four days later, even Kat had noticed that something was up. Finally he had told her that the woman he had been in love with for six years was coming back to Chicago, 'but for heaven's sake don't mention it to anyone at the hospital'.  
  
Finally, at seven forty-five, the emergency doors slid open and a dripping wet figure made its way to the admitting desk. Randi stopped drawing rude pictures on the board for long enough to look round the front. She didn't start fully paying attention until the person put down her umbrella and Mark Greene said, loudly enough for them to hear it upstairs in Labor and Delivery.   
  
'Anna Del Amico? What brings you to our neck of the woods?'  
  
'I'm back,' she replied, shaking herself.  
  
'For good?' he asked incredulously.  
  
'Absolutely. Say hello to your new paeds ER attending.'  
  
The place erupted, and the noise brought Dr Corday out of an exam room where she had been taking a nap. When she saw what all the fuss was about, she joined the hugs, and when Anna finally emerged it was looking overwhelmed and a little glassy eyed. Carter stepped in.  
  
'Dr Del Amico has a shift at eight, and I think it might be an idea if she got fixed up with a locker and a cup of coffee before then.'  
  
'Sure,' Elizabeth replied mischievously. She, in company with all the staff who had been there back when Anna left, was now dying for Carter and Anna to hurry up and get together. Her husband saw the look on her face and hissed in her ear,  
  
'Give them a chance. The poor girl's only been back five minutes and you've already got them married.'  
  
'They're made for each other, Mark,' the surgeon remarked dreamily. 'Any fool can see that.'  
  
'Oh, and you don't think that we are?'   
  
'I have a bowel resection in fifteen minutes,' Elizabeth told him. 'Meet me in the suture room at eleven-thirty.'  
  
'Okay, you're on… what about the patients?'  
  
'It's too wet for people to get sick,' she replied with a meaningful glance at the board. 'And if anyone's out in this weather then they ought to be certified. No, I would say that we are very definitely in for a quiet night.'  
  
Meanwhile, in the lounge, Carter and Anna were drinking coffee. He added sugar to his, saying, 'You even get your old locker back.'  
  
'So I see. I would have thought someone would have taken it by now.'  
  
'Yeah… my, um, med student had it, then another student used it for a while. She only graduated in June, so nobody's had it since then…' He trailed off.  
  
Anna got the impression that he wanted to say more about 'my med student', something that was maybe connected with the very slight limp. She let it go. Whatever it was would keep until they had some privacy, and anyway, it wasn't like he was the only one with secrets.  
  
Carter fell to wondering how he should tell her. He was still in love with her, that much he knew from the sparks of electricity she set off. But she hadn't wanted him five years ago; it was logical that she would want him even less when she found out about the drugs and… everything.  
  
Feeling slightly awkward, she tried to keep the conversation professional. 'Any good paeds cases?'  
  
'No patients,' he said, managing to muster a smile. 'Good, bad, paeds, whatever. People'd rather stay sick than come out in that. I know I would.'  
  
'It's nice to be back in real weather again.'  
  
'What, they don't have snow and rain in Philadelphia?'  
  
'Sure.' She paused, as if considering whether to tell him something, and then just came out with it. 'But they don't in San Francisco. Look, Carter, we have to talk. I need to tell you something, and I know that a lot must have happened round here that you want to tell me. Five years is a hell of a lot of catching up.'  
  
'Right,' he mumbled. He watched as Anna pulled her lab coat on and left the lounge, then curled up with Jerry Springer for company.   
  
~~~~~~  
  
It was almost two hours before they managed to get away - there were still no patients, but Anna kept on getting waylaid by people who remembered her. One of them was, surprisingly enough, the chief of staff. Finally she and Carter wound up in exam six.  
  
'I've had so much caffeine I'm jumping,' she remarked, sprawling on a gurney. 'Romano even stopped to talk to me - I don't know whether to feel complimented or terrified.'  
  
'I would go with terrified.' Sensing that she didn't want to or wasn't ready to discuss her problems, but not wanting to tell her about his, he filled her in on general hospital gossip.   
  
'Doug left not long after you,' he told her. 'We were kind of under-paediatricianed for a few months. But Carol was pregnant and she had twins Thanksgiving 1999. Tess and Kate. They're adorable. After they asked me to be Tess's godfather I almost forgave her for kicking me out of the delivery room. She moved to Seattle and married Doug when they were still babies.'  
  
'Doug Ross a father.' Anna giggled.  
  
'He's not the only one. Mark and Elizabeth have a daughter. Ella. They weren't even together when you left. Oh yes, and Kerry's gay,' he added casually, knowing that this small bombshell would have the required effect.  
  
Sure enough, she shot up as though she had sat on a scalpel. 'She's what?!!'  
  
'Oh, yeah,' he said with a small smirk of satisfaction. 'She's with one of the psych attendings… has been for - must be coming up to three years now. We've got a Croatian attending, Luka Kovac. He just got engaged to an OB intern last week. One of my rivals from med school turned up, she's the emergency fellow. I got my trust fund back. Oh, and,' he suddenly remembered a more serious piece of news. They had all been around it for so long that they didn't even notice anymore. 'You remember Reese, right?'  
  
'Peter Benton's son? How could I forget?'  
  
'He's profoundly deaf.'  
  
'Oh.' She wasn't sure what to say to that. 'What about you?'  
  
'What about me? I told you, I got my trust fund back.'  
  
'And I'm very happy for you, but come on, John. We were best friends. Something happened - the limp, the way you mentioned your med student back there.'  
  
'I was stabbed,' he said, so quietly that she wasn't sure whether she had heard it right. 'Valentine's Day 2000. Me and my medical student, Lucy Knight. There was a schizophrenic patient… I wasn't listening to her and insisted that she go ahead with the LP even when it was clear that he hadn't had enough Ativan. He got hold of a butcher knife… Lucy died. I spent months blaming myself, and I got addicted to fentanyl. At least it started out that way, but it turned into fentanyl, demerol, morphine. Any schedule 2 narcotics I could get my hands on. They busted me. Abby - she's the OB intern I mentioned - caught me and split. She saved my life.' He didn't mention that Abby had been his sponsor. Her alcoholism wasn't a publicly known fact, and he didn't want to broadcast it. 'So yeah, I got sent to Atlanta. I bought into the rehab, I said all the right stuff, and I came home. Then, that Christmas, I relapsed and took two Vicodin. I've been clean now for three years, but - Anna, I'm a drug addict.'  
  
'Three years, Carter, that's a huge achievement,' she pointed out. 'And I would love you anyway, you know that. Max - he never even tried to get clean.'  
  
'Yeah, what about Max? How'd you end up in San Francisco?'  
  
'Philly was a mistake, I knew it almost the moment I stepped off the plane. In Chicago, I had been independent for the first time in my life - no family, no Max, just me and my friends. And I loved it. My family came down on me… they thought that now I was home I could be their little girl again. Max just wanted to screw with my life, so I dumped him. Dated a few guys casually. He didn't like it.'  
  
'Anna? What did he do to you?' Carter asked softly. 'You know that, whatever it was, I'll be there for you, right?'  
  
She stared down at her fingertips in a kind of rigid concentration, and spoke in a fierce, choked-up voice.  
  
'He raped me.'  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Woohoo! Um, the song is 'She's The One' by Robbie Williams. Keep reading and reviewing! Oh yeah, and special note to The Hysterical Rhino, if she's reading this - Latin is over forever.  
  



	4. Healing Hands

Healing Hands  
  
'He - he what?' Carter didn't want to believe it, but he sensed all too easily that what he had just heard was true. Max Rosher. He didn't understand how anyone could hurt the woman in front of him who, despite the years and years of separation, he still persisted in thinking of as 'his' Anna. She sniffed, and he realized that she was crying.  
  
'It's true. At work - about six months after I got there, around Christmas time - he pushed me into the supply closet and just did it. I went to the cops. He got ten years. He also… John, you were right. Remember the percocet? Well, I got him back into rehab, but the hospital told him it was his last chance. When they arrested him they did a tox screen, and he was back on drugs. He lost his license. That was five years ago next December. He'll never get his license back, but he'll be up for bail after New Year.'  
  
'Maybe he won't get it,' Carter said hopefully.  
  
'We can dream, I guess.' She blew her nose. 'I wanted to leave Philly straight away, but for some reason I didn't. Part of it was, there was this really great paediatric psychiatrist attached to the paeds department at CHOP. He was a good friend; I went out for dinner a few times with him and his wife. Her name was Anna, too. Then, eight months after Max went down, one of his old patients turned up at his house and shot him. They had been celebrating - he had won an award from the Mayor of Philadelphia. I… I was on duty in the ER when they brought him in, but he had bled out. The bullet pierced his liver, his kidney, and his colon. He was a DOA.' She looked up at Carter and managed a sad smile through her tears. 'His name was Dr Malcolm Crowe. He was one of the most special men I ever met.'  
  
'Then… what?'  
  
'I couldn't stay in Philly. Really, Malcolm was my only friend. He was dead. There was nothing left for me there. I - I considered coming back to Chicago, but I couldn't. You know, you were here, Carol and Elizabeth, all my real friends. But I didn't see how I could come back, after having behaved so badly.'  
  
'Oh, Anna, you didn't behave badly. You did what you thought was right. We would've welcomed you back with open arms.' Especially considering the replacement we got for you and Doug, he added silently to himself. He and Cleo Finch had never exactly been on the best of terms.  
  
'Maybe, but I couldn't take that risk.'  
  
'So you went to San Francisco?' he asked sadly.  
  
'So I went to San Francisco. It's really not so bad down there - warm weather, nice people, nice views. But then I… my heart was never really there. My friends weren't there, and neither were you.' She hesitated. 'Carter, I may not have behaved badly, but I did act like a complete and utter ass, because I didn't do what I had to do.'  
  
'What was that?'  
  
'I didn't tell you the truth about us. I was in love with you… I still am. I would understand if I completely pissed you off, but…'  
  
Carter cut her off, laying his hands on the side of her face and kissing her full on the mouth. A shiver ran up his spine. He had waited for this for almost six years. When they finally pulled away, he asked softly,  
  
'Does that answer your question?'  
  
Tonight I cried the tears of a child  
Who knows what fear runs deep and wild inside  
But the river's in flood tonight  
  
I lay down and the light streamed across my face  
I felt the beauty of some deeper grace  
And I tried  
To find my way to the other side  
  
I feel your skin as smooth as silk  
Drunk like a baby on his momma's milk  
Take me down under the wishing tree  
Lay your healing hands on me  
  
Been a long time riding this deserted train  
There's no messiahs out here, baby  
But I found the holy grail all right  
'Cause I'm lying in your arms tonight  
  
I feel your skin as smooth as silk  
Drunk like a baby on his momma's milk  
Take me down under the wishing tree  
And lay your healing hands on me  
Lay your healing hands on me  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Hi, me again. That song was 'Healing Hands' by Mark Cohn, from the ER soundtrack. I don't know how many of you got the not-so oblique Sixth Sense reference, but yeah, I don't own Malcolm and Anna Crowe. I know that this chapter was a littleshort, but it was fluff. I needed it to finish the end of Chapter 3 off, but it's also important. Events in this chapter will be referred to later on. Should have Chap. 5 up by the middle of next week, say Wednesday or Thursday.  



	5. Good Conversation

Good Conversation  
  
It was electric. His imagination hadn't been wasted, but compare to the real thing it had paled into insignificance. She ran her hands through his hair, tasting him. Neither of them wanted to be the first to stop, and eventually they broke away simultaneously.   
  
'Wow.' Carter was the first one to regain his powers of speech. 'That was… amazing.'  
  
'Yeah.' She forced herself to look away from his eyes and concentrate. Those deep pools of warm chocolatey brown were way too distracting. 'John, do you mind if we just take this very slow.'  
  
'Uh-uh.' After five long years of waiting, he was happy to have her on any level. Besides, there was something else he had to tell her. Nowhere near as bad as his addiction by any stretch of the imagination, but just as earth-shattering, if not more. 'Anna, there's something I have to tell you.'   
  
'You a woman underneath those pants, John?'  
  
He smiled. 'No. It's, um, well, I'm not exactly sure how to say it, but anyway, it's this. I'm a father.'  
  
'A what?' She almost spat out the mouthful of water that she had unwittingly taken. 'Since when?'  
  
'For almost eighteen years, as it turns out. But I didn't know until a few weeks ago. It was a high school fling. She never told me. She died just down the hall in trauma.' He reiterated the whole story for what seemed like the hundredth time. Anna nodded.   
  
'Hell… you… an eighteen-year-old daughter.'  
  
'When I found out, it was kinda like Chase, y'know?' he asked. 'When I tried to detox him. The first part. Without you. I was in way over my head. Only this time, I didn't have you turn up at my door to save my ass. And the outcome was much better.' In the last few days, since she had broken down, things had become much more relaxed and less pretentious between them. She had laughed at his jazz collection, and he in turn had given her his candid opinion of her music. Last night, despite Carter's protestations that it was a chick flick, they had rented 'Pretty Woman'. She was horrified that he had never seen it before, and in the end he had gone as far as to admit that it was quite good. What he suspected had shocked Kat more had been his words as the credits rolled.  
  
'I'm like her. Vivien.'  
  
'How come?' she asked, joking, 'You're not a hooker, are you?'  
  
When they had finished laughing at the image of John Truman Carter the Third as a hooker, he had admitted simply to his daughter, 'I want the fairytale.'  
  
He became aware of Anna snapping her fingers in front of his face. 'Hey! John! Pizza!'  
  
'Pizza? I could eat some pizza. Where?'  
  
'Admit desk. Get going before they eat it all.' At the mention of pizza, Carter leapt up and raced outside. Anna followed close behind him, and neither was prepared for the sight that greeted them. The admit desk was covered in food - pizza boxes included, but the centerpiece was a cake declaring, "Welcome Back, Dr Del Amico".  
  
'Wow.' Carter admired it. 'Where'd you guys get a cake at this time of the morning?'  
  
'We have our sources,' Deb informed him.   
  
'You guys!' Anna was starting to look teary. To avoid a full-blown waterworks, she blew her nose and said cheerfully, 'Okay, let's get stuck in.'  
  
'You know,' Mark said, helping himself to a slice of pepperoni. 'Kerry'd kill us if she knew about this.'  
  
'Naah.' Carter disagreed. 'We're quite… there're still no patients? So okay, we're comatose. She wouldn't mind.'  
  
Mark looked unsure, but was saved from a complex argument about the merits of Kerry Weaver by two sets of footsteps and a pair of familiar female voices. Abby Lockhart and Elizabeth Corday.  
  
'We heard there was a party,' Abby said, kissing her fiance.  
  
'Yeah,' added Elizabeth. 'Hope you didn't think we were going to miss out on it.'  
  
'We would never do that,' Luka reassured her, slightly unconvincingly.  
  
'No?' Abby began going through the boxes of pizza methodically. 'Didn't we get any anchovy?'  
  
'Eeeew.' The response was united from the whole ER staff. Their opinion, and they made no attempt to hide it, was that anchovy pizza was the spawn of Satan, the root of all evil, call it what you like. Bad.  
  
'We have chicken. Um, tuna, pepperoni, ham, veggie, spicy sausage…' Elizabeth ignored Deb's recitation of the pizzas. She had spotted a carton of Cherry Garcia ice cream, helped herself to a spoon, and sat on the desk.  
  
'Who invited surgery and OB down here, anyway.'  
  
'I spend enough time down here to count,' Elizabeth replied between mouthfuls of ice cream. She had got addicted to this while she was pregnant with Ella, and couldn't seem to wean herself off it. Not that she would want to, it was way too nice.   
  
'I was an ER nurse for two years, and I didn't bring Dr Coburn with me, which if you'd really wanted something to complain about…' Abby was cut off abruptly by the phone ringing. Anna, being that she was sitting practically on top of it, answered. A voice, hesitant and unsure, came back at her.  
  
'Is this County General?'  
  
Anna would have recognized that voice anywhere in the world. 'Carol? It's Anna, I'm back in Chicago… yes, for good.' She glanced at the clock on the wall. It would be a little after eleven in Seattle. 'We're all here, there're no patients. The rain must have scared them off… yeah, hold on, I'll put you on speakerphone.'  
  
For ten minutes, the staff talked to Carol until she hung up reluctantly, pointing out that it was long distance and she was tying up an ER line anyway. Anna sat back and chewed her pizza, looking round at her friends. Malik told a bad joke and got bombarded with pizza crust and cups for his troubles. Yosh brought out gingerbread men - definitely, she noted with a wry smile, men. Same old Yosh. Suddenly it hit her. What she had come back to Chicago for. This was what she had missed. The cameraderie, the laughter, the collegiate ribbing. The meaningless, inane, good conversation.   
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
A/N: Chapter 6 will be forthcoming, probably within the next couple of days… sometime between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Maybe earlier, definitely not later. We get out of the hospital and jump three months to April. Okay… I got lots of lovely reviews when I posted the first two chapters and it was at the top of the 'Sort by New Stories' list. Then, when I posted the second two, I got one (thanks, Thena). People who are reading, take careful note. See the pretty box underneath this rant? Yeah? It's for reviews. ::shrugs:: I'm an author, I like my feedback, what can I say? Go, review!  



	6. The Best Of Me

The Best Of Me  
  
Carter rolled over and slammed his palm onto the digital alarm clock. No sooner than the music had shut off, his pager emitted a loud, incessant, bleep. He squinted at the luminous display and recognized the number of Anna's apartment. Grabbing the phone, he dialed her number and, as soon as he heard a click in his ear, growled down the mouthpiece,  
  
'Anna, it is five-thirty in the morning, what do you want?'  
  
'Just making sure you got up. I'm on at six, I'll see you at work.' She hung up, and he shook his head, trying to defog it. Twenty-five minutes later, he stuck a candle in a cinnamon roll and lit it with his lighter, carrying the tray through to his daughter's room.  
  
'Happy birthday, sweetie.' He flicked on the light and Kat spontaneously closed her eyes again before re-opening them gingerly.   
  
'Dad. What time is it?'  
  
'Almost six.' He indicated the candle and she leaned up on her elbows and blew it out, then surveyed the breakfast, making a dive for the coffee.  
  
'You need your caffeine fix, huh?'  
  
'Yeah. I think I inherited that from you. Mom didn't drink coffee,' she added casually, starting on the cinnamon rolls.  
  
'There's eggs too, if you want them.'   
  
'Eggs would be perfect. Hey,' she called after him as he started back to the kitchen. 'Special occasion or something?'  
  
He laughed, returning fifteen minutes later with scrambled eggs. Kat dug in, but as she did so, said with a certain degree of concern in her voice, 'Dad, you're being very nice to me. The rolls, the eggs. Is this a sorry but Dave called and I have to cover the ER tonight?'  
  
'No, this is a it's my daughter's eighteenth birthday. Am I not allowed to be nice to you?'  
  
'Of course you are.'   
  
'I'll leave you to finish your eggs. Anna and I will meet you in the hospital lobby at six-thirty.'  
  
She nodded and refocused on the food and caffeine, while Carter grabbed his car keys and went out to the Jeep. He had barely slid the key into the ignition when he got the feeling that he was about to be overwhelmed. Kat had been living with him for three and a half months, and he and Anna had been dating for a little less than that, yet he had now reached the point where he couldn't imagine his life without either of them. Did eighteenth birthdays make people unusually emotional, or was it just him? He didn't know. What he did know for sure was that it was now six thirty-five and he was about to be late for his 7am shift. He eventually raced in the emergency doors with about three seconds to spare, and was immediately attacked by Anna.   
  
'Good morning to you too.' The kiss stopped halfway to her lips when the crackling of the radio interrupted them. He snagged it. 'This is County base, go ahead.'  
  
'County, this is Unit 57, incoming with an MVA…'  
  
'… ETA four minutes,' Carter shouted, ditching his coat and bookbag behind the admit desk. 'Prep trauma one, grab Chen, and notify the OR.' He pulled on a trauma gown and a pair of gloves and went outside to wait for the rig, armed with a cup of coffee. In his excitement at preparing Kat's breakfast, he had kind of forgotten to have any himself. Exactly three and a half minutes later, unit 57 pulled up, almost flattening Haleh.   
  
'How many traumas?' Carter bellowed. Doris had been in such a hurry that she had hung up before he ever had a chance to get that information.   
  
'One major, one minor.' The door opened in his face and he saw immediately that the minor was a little girl of about six or seven. He nodded to Chuny.  
  
'Take her and get Dr Del Amico. Okay,' he turned his attention back to the major. 'What've we got?'  
  
'Robert Maguire, 37 years old, driver. Hit the windshield on impact. Intubated in the field, crashed in the rig. Down time ten minutes. GCS is 3, BP 70 over 50, pulse and respirations absent.'  
  
'Nice and easy, on my count, one, two, three.' He allowed himself a backward glance to the paeds ER. 'Is that his daughter?'  
  
'Katie.'  
  
'Let's get a CBC, chem 7, BA, lytes, UA, four units of o-neg, type and crossmatch for six.'  
  
As Deb finished her recitation, Carter cut in, forcing thoughts of Kat out of his mind. 'We need a portable c-spine, chest and pelvis. Call CT and page the surgical resident.'  
  
'He's in v-fib.'  
  
'Charge the paddles to three hundred, push an amp of epi. Clear.'  
  
'Did someone call for a surgical resident?'  
  
Carter turned his head as he pounded on the guy's chest. He looked more like a third-year med student than a surgical resident, but he didn't comment, just said shortly, 'Right. You are?'  
  
'Dr Ron Martin. I'm a surgical intern.'  
  
An intern? Carter almost groaned out loud. He had been a surgical intern and probably done more thoracotomies than this kid could count. 'Charge to three-sixty - clear.' Almost an hour later, the monitor flatlined and he spoke again. 'Wait there, hold CPR.'  
  
'Asystole'  
  
'How long since the last epi?'  
  
'Three minutes.'   
  
'Can't you do something?' It was the intern.  
  
'You can't shock a flatline.' His ears turned defensively and interestingly bright pink. 'I mean, can't we try pacing him or something?'  
  
'Full arrest from blunt trauma, he's been down for over an hour counting transport time. That's pretty sucky odds.'  
  
'Time of death, 8:03.' Carter shut off the monitor. 'I'll talk to the daughter.'  
  
'I'll call DCFS,' Deb added. 'Haleh, would you please make sure that she is cleaned up?'  
  
Carter hesitated outside the paeds ER. Anna saw him and came out.  
  
'Is she okay?'  
  
'She's pretty shaken up. Fractured collarbone, cuts and scrapes, nothing that won't heal. Her dad?'  
  
'He's dead.' Carter had also managed to extract from Doris that the girl's mother was dead, but Anna had already been told this by Katie herself.   
  
'I'll tell her,' he offered.  
  
'Have you called DCFS?'  
  
'Deb's doing it…' It had taken Anna a while to cotton on to the fact that 'Deb' and 'Jing-Mei' were precisely the same person. He continued. 'So, you know, she should get off the phone in two hours or so.'  
  
He headed into the paeds ER. Chuny was putting a Band-Aid on the little girl's finger and he sat down as she finished up. 'Katie, I'm your daddy's doctor.' He faltered for a second and sent Chuny a look that clearly stated, "some days I really hate my job." Swallowing, he kept going. 'Your daddy was hurt really badly, and his heart stopped beating. We beat on his chest and sent shocks to his heart for over an hour, but he was hurt too much, and he couldn't get better. Katie, your daddy died. I'm sorry.'  
  
A single, solitary tear slid down her nose, but that soon turned into a flood, and Carter found himself hugging the shaking form. After about ten minutes, the sobs subsided and she pulled away from him.  
  
'Is he with my mommy?'  
  
'In heaven?' Carter asked. He received a small, barely perceptible nod in reply. 'Yes, he is.'  
  
'Then I guess he's happy now.'  
  
'I guess so.' Carter sat with her for a while, and the rest of his shift passed by in kind of a blur. He took a couple of traumas, but they both at least made it up to surgery. At six, he signed off and was on his way into the lounge when he crashed into Anna, who was wearing a black cocktail dress and looking stunning.  
  
'Did DCFS show on my kid?'  
  
'Adele Newman came in about an hour ago, just after you went off.'  
  
'Thanks, John.'  
  
'No problem. Hey, where are you going?'  
  
'I'm looking for Elizabeth. I'll meet you and Kat down here in twenty-five minutes.'  
  
'Okay. Elizabeth was headed for her office the last time I saw her. And Anna?' He opened the door. 'You look beautiful.'  
  
She nodded and disappeared, and Carter went into the lounge to change. He emerged with about two minutes to spare, after a vicious argument with his tie…  
  
'Whoo.'  
  
… and the first person he ran into just had to be Dave Malucci.  
  
'Hot date tonight?'  
  
'Maybe.' He pulled his tux straight. Glancing round the lobby, he almost didn't recognize Kat, and did a double take. His daughter was wearing a green dress, and, from a girl who practically lived in jeans, the effect was quite startling. She was standing next to Anna, overtopping her by a couple of inches. In the height aspect, she certainly took after her six foot something father. Julia had been tiny.   
  
'Do I know you two gorgeous ladies?'  
  
'Dad,' Kat said as they began to walk out to the bay. 'Where are we going?'  
  
'You'll see.' Twenty minutes later the Jeep pulled up on West Van Buren Street and he led them into a tall building, where they took the elevator to the fortieth floor.   
  
'What is this place?' Anna hissed in his ear.   
  
'A French restaurant.' Her face was a picture when she saw the view of the river, but that was nothing compared to his when both she and Kat addressed the waiter in perfect French. At the end of the meal, Carter raised his champagne glass.  
  
'To Kat.'  
  
'To Kat,' Anna repeated, as they clinked glasses. She knew about the surprise Carter had lined up, but Kat had no idea until they pulled up outside his condo back at Lincoln Park and he handed her a wrapped box. She opened it and found a perfectly ordinary set of keys.   
  
'Dad, these are car keys.'  
  
'Oh. Yeah. Walk down the street and push the alarm button.'   
  
'Okay.' She got out of the car and pushed it, lighting up the brake lights on a shiny Porsche. 'Dad?! Oh, my God.'  
  
'Happy birthday, Kat.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
'Thank you,' she said, when they got inside. 'And not just for the car. For everything.'  
  
'I love you,' he replied. 'Don't wake me up in the morning, okay?'  
  
Anna wrapped her arms around Carter's neck as he watched the retreating figure. When her door shut, he kissed her hard. When the kiss had lasted for a long time - much longer than any of their other kisses - he suddenly knew what was going to happen. He and Anna had been together for almost three months now, but had not yet consummated their relationship. His feelings were confirmed when a voice said in his ear,  
  
'Maybe we should move this into the bedroom.'  
  
'You sure you want this?'  
  
'Mmm.' She nodded deeply. 'Make love to me, John.'  
  
No one will ever touch me more  
And I only hope that in return  
I might have saved the best of me   
For you.  
  
So many years gone  
With love that was so wrong  
I can't forget the way it used to be  
And how you changed the taste of love for me  
  
You were my one more chance   
I never thought I'd find  
You were the one moment  
I'll always have in my mind  
No-one will ever touch me more  
And I only hope that in return  
I might have saved the best of me for you  
  
And we'll have no ending  
If we can hold on   
And I think I've come this far because of you  
Could be no other love but ours will do  
  
You were my one more chance   
I never thought I'd find  
You were the one moment  
I'll always have in my mind  
No-one will ever touch me more  
And I only hope that in return  
I might have saved the best of me for you  
  
No-one will ever touch me more  
And I only hope that in return  
No matter how much we have to learn  
I might have saved the best of me for you  
  
I saved the best of me  
For you  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Okay, this was just a tad longer than I expected it to be, but hey, never mind. Hoping to do a double post sometime next weekend, so I'll see you then. Uh, yeah, I don't own the song The Best of Me, nor do I own the recording artist Barry Manilow. Go review!  



	7. What A Wonderful World

What A Wonderful World  
  
Carter was hyper, and it was becoming increasingly obvious to both his patients and co-workers. He had been practically jumping from the moment he had woken up, and had turned up at work over an hour before the start of his shift, having given up on sleep. Mark and Kerry had put it down to excitement at the prospect of Kat's high school graduation that night, Deb had noticed but had chosen to keep her mouth shut, and Anna had a day off. Luka, however, finally noticed that he was acting more and more like Dave Malucci as the day wore on, and promised himself that he would drag him off as soon as they got a chance. As it turned out, it was an unnecessary promise.  
  
Nervously patting the small object in the pocket of his lab coat, Carter attempted, for the third time in ten minutes, to start an IV. This time, he poked the needle straight through the vein and swore under his breath.   
  
'You sure you've done this before?'  
  
'Yes!' He had to admit, as far as his IV skills were concerned, he was back to his first day on ER rotation. Heaven help him if a trauma came in. He gave up. 'Haleh, can you start a saline IV, get a CBC, chem 7, EKG and cardiac enzymes?'  
  
'Sure. Are you sure you're OK?'  
  
'I'm fine.' He let the door slam behind him and started hunting for Luka, who he eventually found hiding in a corner of the admit desk with a pile of charts, looking very much as though he was avoiding being landed with any more patients. Glancing round to make sure that they were reasonably safe from the nurses hearing them and posting their conversation in a memo, he said quietly, 'Luka? I need to talk to you.'  
  
'Sure. Here?'  
  
'Um, no. Doc's, ten minutes?'  
  
'Sure,' he repeated.   
  
Exactly ten minutes later, Carter cut across the ambulance bay, crossed the street, and entered the diner. Luka was sitting at the counter drinking coffee. He joined him, ordered a decaff, and lit a cigarette. After finding out about Kat, he had never quite managed to quit again. Luka raised his eyebrows.  
  
'Decaff?'  
  
'I'm hyper enough without any extra caffeine.'  
  
'So I noticed,' he said wryly. 'Is this about Kat graduating? Or is there something else?'  
  
'It's certainly not helping,' Carter admitted, pulling a black velvet box out of his pocket and putting it down on the counter. 'That's the something else.'  
  
'Oh, you shouldn't have.' Luka opened it with a certain degree of curiosity, although he was pretty sure what it contained. Sure enough, a beautiful silver ring set with two diamonds and a sapphire stared back up at him. 'Wow. Nice.'  
  
'Do you think it's too early?'   
  
'Not at all.'  
  
'No?' He questioned this with a grin. 'It only took you two and a half years for you to propose to your wife, and you think that six months isn't too early.'  
  
Luka twisted his very new wedding ring with a small smile. He and Abby had finally tied the knot three weeks ago in the same church that Mark and Elizabeth had had their wedding. He had heard a lot about Carter and Anna's story from various people who had been there when she first worked there as a paediatric intern double boarding in emergency medicine, and, after considering his answer, said, 'You're perfect together. You know, we look at you and we see you together, and it just fits. And you know that it's going to last forever.'  
  
'Really?'  
  
'Yeah. Really. And with Abby I did wait a long time… largely because I wasn't really sure whether she wanted me or you… but Danjiela and I were married ten weeks after we first met and we were together for almost ten years, until she died.'  
  
'Do you still miss her?'  
  
'I still love her, Carter, just as I still love and will always love Marko and Jasna. But it's time to get on with my life. And now I have Abby - and our baby.'  
  
'You mean Abby's - oh, congratulations, man.'  
  
'Thank you. But Anna will say yes. When were you planning on proposing to her?'  
  
'Tonight. After Kat's graduation. Can I tell Abby that I know?'  
  
'Of course. You're one of her best friends, I don't think that she would mind. But we want to keep it under wraps for a little longer, so don't tell anyone else just yet.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
When Anna and Carter walked in the emergency doors for their 6pm shifts the next day, Abby and Luka were at the admit desk and jumped up. By means of waving his arms around to attract their attention and violently shaking his head, he managed to convey a vague message. It was unclear exactly what he was trying to say, but they got the impression that his night had not exactly gone as planned and they shouldn't say anything in front of Anna. When she disappeared into the paeds ER, he sat down on the desk.  
  
'John?' Abby looked worried. 'What happened? Did she say no?'  
  
'I didn't ask her!'   
  
'Oh.' That put kind of a new spin on things. 'Um, are we allowed to ask why?'  
  
'I guess so. Kat knew that I was going to propose last night, because it was her graduation and you know, I asked her if she would mind, and she said no, of course not. And then, she was valedictorian. And she was so happy - and, by the way, we got incredibly drunk and I have the most horrendous hangover ever - and I just couldn't do it, y'know? I couldn't overshadow her big night by asking my girlfriend to marry me.'  
  
'No,' Abby agreed, handing him a glass of water and a couple of Tylenol. 'I can see that.'  
  
'So now I just have to find another way of doing it.'  
  
'You'll be OK,' Luka told him. 'But if I would strongly advise you to stop acting all weird before she figures something out. You can't put it down to excitement about Kat today.'  
  
'No, I guess not.' He stood up. 'Okay, I need coffee.'  
  
Abby and Luka managed to waylay Deb as she was leaving after the day shift. They gave her their keys and asked her to go home and come back, stopping by their apartment on the way. A little after ten, they engineered it so that Carter and Anna would go into the lounge within a couple of minutes of each other. Anna had already gone in, and Carter nearly crashed into her when he opened the door. She was standing motionless and staring at the lounge. There must have been two hundred candles lit, and, looking at the door, he saw Luka peering through a crack between the door and the frame. He mouthed a silent 'thank you' to him, and the door was closed. Anna finally managed to regain her speech.  
  
'What's going on in here?'  
  
'Oh.' He smiled and dragged her into the middle of the room. 'I think I know what's going on.'  
  
'John…'   
  
He knelt down on the floor. 'Okay, I was going to do this last night, and I had a speech all memorized, but suddenly I can't remember a word of it. But now I know that it doesn't matter what I say, all that matters is that you make me happy and you love me more than I ever thought was possible, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.' He scrabbled around for the box and opened it. 'Anna Del Amico, will you marry me?'  
  
She wiped her eyes and mumbled something inaudible, then nodded her head, slid the ring onto her finger and whispered. 'Yes.'  
  
I see trees of green, red roses too  
I watch them bloom, for me and you  
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.  
  
I see skies of blue, clouds of white  
Bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights  
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.  
  
The colors of a rainbow, so pretty in the sky  
Are also on the faces of people going by   
I see friends shaking hands, saying, 'how do you do'  
They're really saying, I love you.  
  
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow  
They'll learn much more than I'll never know  
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world  
  
Yes I think to myself - what a wonderful world.  
Oh, yeah.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Okay, so not quite a double bill. But almost. Part 8 (8, right? Whatever, the next bit) will be up sometime tomorrow evening. Right now, a shower and the episode of The West Wing that I missed on Tuesday are taking priority. The song I used at the end was 'What A Wonderful World' by Louis 'Sachmo' Armstrong. Luka's line in Doc Magoo's about Carter and Anna, and the lounge being filled with candles for Carter to propose were both stolen from Friends. TOW The Truth About London and TOW The Proposal respectively. They did not belong to me.  



	8. The Lady In Red

The Lady In Red  
  
The click of the door woke Anna up, and she rolled over and looked at the clock. The fuzzy green numbers came slowly into focus, and they hazily registered themselves on her brain. 6:03. She was beginning to drift off again when she jerked upwards and started racing around the bedroom like a crazy person. Carter was still out cold. She went into the bathroom and hopped back, with a toothbrush in her mouth and one leg in her skirt. The hospital was at least a forty minute ride away at this time of night on New Year's Eve. That now left them with exactly thirteen minutes to get dressed and get out of there. She threw a shoe at Carter and hit him squarely on the nose.   
  
'Ow!' He sat up. 'What the hell was that for?'  
  
'We have a shift in fifty-three - no, make that fifty-two - minutes. Move!'  
  
'What happened?'   
  
In the last nine months since they had started sleeping together, and even more in the six months that they had been engaged, Anna had spent most of her time at Carter's apartment, and she had learned quickly that he was not the best of company if woken up suddenly. She supposed that being whacked in the nose with a shoe counted as 'suddenly'. Rinsing her mouth out, she reminded him.   
  
'We had sex, we went to sleep, and we forgot to switch the alarm on. It's ten past six.'  
  
Slowly, Carter stood up and looked round hazily for his pants. He smiled as the memory of exactly what he and Anna had done before falling asleep resurfaced. The smile disappeared from his face as he recalled who the other attending on the graveyard shift was. He sat down heavily on the bed and remarked perceptively, 'Weaver's going to kill us.'  
  
'Jeez, you think?'  
  
'Remind me again why we're working tonight?' Finally realizing that they were about to be very late, his speed picked up and he began to actually get dressed.  
  
'It was a choice between tonight and Christmas Day.' She stood in front of her fiancé and he slid his hand up the dress that she had chosen to wear as a concession to it being New Year, and pulled her towards him. She slapped his shoulder lightly. 'Not now.'  
  
'I cannot believe I am spending New Year's Eve, for the second year in a row, with sick people. Or, as is more likely, people trying to do the death-by-alcohol-poisoning thing.'  
  
'Why?' Anna's lips twitched mischievously. 'What would you rather be doing?'  
  
Realizing that nothing short of an earthquake would get them out of going into work; he started to put his shirt on as he talked. 'Well, of course, I could be at the Carter family banquet, but I think I prefer the sick people to that option. Or, I could be with you and Kat, which I would like very much, but…'  
  
'But she's out,' Anna completed his sentence. 'Nothing else?'  
  
'Maybe. What I would really like, since my daughter effectively ruined any plans I might have had to spend it with her, is to spend it in bed - with you - and a bottle of champagne. But no. I mean…' He stood up and looked for his shoes. 'It's a holiday. You would've thought people would have better things to do than get sick and come hang out in the ER.'  
  
She laughed. 'I've spent every holiday since I started my third year wondering about that. I can't do the bed and the champagne, but we could always sneak up to the roof about midnight.'  
  
'I like that idea.'  
  
'Me too.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
As it turned out, between the traffic and the weather, they were over twenty minutes late, and tried to get in without attracting the attention of Kerry. It was an unnecessary measure, as they were informed by Dave, who was as ticked off as they were about working the holiday, that her car was in the shop and the El was down, so she was relying on managing to find a cab to get to the hospital. Partly mollified, they got to work. It was, Anna noted, relatively quiet. But then, she was only responsible for the paeds ER, which was empty. The main ER got the people who had started partying maybe a little too early. An example of which was the drunk John Doe that Carter got stuck treating.  
  
'Ew.' He jumped back, not quite fast enough to avoid his lab coat, pants, and shirt getting covered in vomit. 'Ah, Lily, could you take this gentleman to exam two and get a CBC, tox screen and BAL, please?'  
  
'Sure.'  
  
He disappeared to find scrubs and an extra lab coat to change into. Around eleven, the main ER got quieter. Every last doctor and nurse in the place knew from experience, however, that by one the place would be crawling. People tended to be a lot more drunk and do a lot more half-assed things after midnight than they did just before. At eleven-fifty, when Carter's only patient was the John Doe, whose BA level had come back three times over the legal limit, and who was sleeping it off in an exam room, he went up to the roof, where he was joined five minutes later by Anna.  
  
'It's dead down there,' she commented.   
  
'Yeah. Sometimes I wish it could stay that way.' He pulled her to her feet. 'Dance with me.'  
  
'What?'  
  
He wrapped his arms around her waist. 'You have to love like you've never been hurt and dance like nobody's watching. Dance with me.'  
  
'I like you in these scrubs, Dr Carter,' she told him after a small pause.   
  
'Then maybe I'll have to start wearing them more often.'  
  
'It's midnight,' Anna said softly, looking at her watch. 'Happy New Year.'   
  
'Happy New Year.'  
  
As the fireworks died down, music started playing from the top floor and as they started to dance again, Carter sang.   
  
'I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight  
I've never seen you shine so bright  
I've never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance  
Looking for a little romance  
Given half a chance  
I have never seen that dress you're wearing  
Or the highlights in your hair  
That catch your eyes  
I have been blind  
  
The lady in red is dancing with me  
Cheek to cheek  
There's nobody here  
It's just you and me  
It's where I wanna be  
But I hardly know this beauty by my side  
I'll never forget the way you look tonight  
  
I've never seen you looking so gorgeous as you did tonight  
I've never seen you shine so bright  
You were amazing  
I've never seen so many people want to be there by your side  
And when you turned to me and smiled, it took my breath away  
I have never had such a feeling such a feeling  
Such a feeling of complete and utter love, as I do tonight  
  
The lady in red is dancing with me  
Cheek to cheek  
There's nobody here  
It's just you and me  
It's where I wanna be  
But I hardly know this beauty by my side  
I'll never forget the way you look tonight  
  
I never will forget the way you look tonight  
The lady in red  
My lady in red.  
  
'I love you,' he whispered.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Woohoo! Big milestone here, I'm onto the new bits that were not in 'I Made It Through The Rain'. Otherwise known as, hey, that was a brand new chapter. Which took me two hours without a break to write, so please review it. The song was 'Lady In Red' by Chris De Burgh, which obviously I do not own. Parts 9 and 10 coming very soon, hopefully by Saturday night or Sunday morning at the latest. I would tell you the titles but they will give away the storylines. Also, I'm sorry, I know, no Kat. But I've wanted them to dance on the roof since I started writing this series last November.  



	9. Marriage and Doctors

Marriage and Doctors  
  
Carter fingered the envelope in his pocket that had arrived at the hospital for him that morning. Unfortunately, since getting his hands on it, he hadn't managed to get hold of Anna for longer than thirty seconds. Kerry, he mused, had been more cooperative than he had ever known her be before. He couldn't ever remember getting a week off so easily. But then, she had been cooperative about most things since he had got engaged. Now all he had to do was hope that Anna would go for this. Telling her would be a good start also, and that was proving more difficult than he had imagined. Eventually he found her alone in the lounge, getting coffee.   
  
'It started snowing again,' he commented.  
  
'Yeah.' She stirred sugar into her mug. 'What wouldn't I give for a few days of actual sunshine. As in, warm sunshine. I swear to God, it wasn't this cold last February.'  
  
'Well.' Carter pulled the envelope out of his pocket. 'I can't make the Chicago snow go away, but how does a week in the Caribbean sound?'  
  
'Really?'   
  
'Really. Fly out of O'Hare tomorrow morning. I grovelled to Kerry and got the two of us next week off.'  
  
'Wow.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
24 hours later, Carter and Anna disembarked the American Airlines plane on the tiny island of Nevis. Dressed like Eskimos as they were coming straight from what, for the last few weeks, had closely resembled Antarctica, the heat hit them. Carter pulled off his trench coat and slung it over the top of his flight back. It wasn't exactly tropical, but compared to Chicago it felt like the middle of summer, and when they got out of the airport they discovered that they were on a real paradise island.   
  
'You know,' said Carter, as he dragged his case into the hotel, 'Chicago's going to feel twice as cold when we get back after this.'  
  
'Don't talk about going back. For seven days, we don't have to be ER docs, and we don't have to live in a city where it snows incessantly, and we can pretend that this is forever.'  
  
'D'you want it to be forever?' he asked, half worried that she would say yes.  
  
'Part of me, the part with my six-mile-wide romantic streak that doesn't need a hospital to justify its existence, says that I would quite like it. You know, living in a small community and being the town healer kind of thing. The bigger part of me, the part that does require a hospital to justify its existence, reminds me that I'd hate it after six months, if not sooner. Anyway…' She yawned. 'Chicago's home.'  
  
They dropped the subject, but the part about her romantic streak had set Carter thinking. He had a romantic streak as well, that was why he had loved Abby and Luka filling the lounge with candles for him to propose so much. They had been there for four days before it hit him. They hadn't set a wedding date, largely because they were still trying to think of ways to avoid having a 'Carter', high-society type of wedding and none of them seemed to be working. Sitting on the beach, watching the sun set, he suddenly said to her,  
  
'Anna, why don't we get married while we're here?'  
  
He barely waited for her to agree before going off to find out if they actually could. After discovering that, as long as they had their passports with them and had been on the island for three days, there was absolutely no problem with them getting married on the island, he made two phone calls. The first one was to Mark, and, for a change, he was at home.  
  
'Mark? It's Carter. I need to ask a favor.' He was hopping with excitement.  
  
There was a small pause while Mark, in Chicago, tried to figure out what was wrong with this picture, and finally he said, 'Carter, aren't you in the Caribbean?'  
  
'I'm getting married on Friday.'  
  
'You're whaaaat?'  
  
'I would love it if you would be my best man…'  
  
'Carter, I would be honored.'  
  
'…and I know that Anna wants Elizabeth to be there too.'  
  
'We'll be there. Technical question: do we get to tell everyone, or do you want to keep it quiet?'  
  
'Would you keep it quiet? We want this to be a surprise, and if you tell, say, Dave, it'll be all over the hospital in less than an hour.'  
  
'Sure. I'll see you on Friday.'  
  
'Yeah… oh, wait, Mark! Has Abby dropped that goddaughter of mine yet?'  
  
'Um, no, but I saw her yesterday and she's pretty keen to get the show on the road.'  
  
Carter laughed and hung up. His second call was to Massachusetts, where he told Kat what was going on and extracted a promise from her that she would be there or die. When Friday came around, Anna disappeared with Kat and Elizabeth in a semi-traditional not seeing the bride before the wedding thing. Carter's nerves were killing him. Mark, who had arrived the night before with his wife, made several unsuccessful attempts to calm him down before letting something slip that he had intended to keep a secret until after the wedding.   
  
'Abby had her daughter yesterday.'  
  
'She what? Mark, how come you didn't tell me this before?'  
  
'I intended to tell you and Anna together after the wedding. But I thought it might calm you down a bit if you knew. She went into labor not long after you called. Erica Danjiela. Born at five to four yesterday morning, eight pounds. She's beautiful. I know that Danjiela's after Luka's first wife,' he added, 'But I don't know where they got Erica from.'  
  
'And nobody knows where you and Elizabeth got Ella from,' Carter quipped. 'It's after Abby's brother. He's an air traffic controller in Florida.'  
  
'I never knew she even had a brother,' Mark confessed. 'But everyone was so damn excited over the baby that they couldn't have cared less why Elizabeth and I were disappearing for two days, so your secret's safe.'  
  
After that, Carter's nerves dissipated somewhat. At least, he was no longer breaking out into a hot sweat every five minutes, and he was reasonably calm when, at ten to six, he and Mark made their way down to the beach where Anna, Kat, and Elizabeth were waiting. It was a short ceremony, the kind of wedding they had, essentially, been trying to find a way to have since they got engaged. Since it was also slightly unplanned, neither of them had written vows, but managed to make something up on the spot. The one thing that they had actually managed to plan was to agree that Anna should go first.  
  
'John, you've been my best friend since I met you six years ago, but I was an idiot and I ran away. I had some bad love in my life, and I spent a lot of time wondering whether there was anyone out there who was right for me. Then I realized that he was in front of me the whole time, and I fell in love with my best friend. I love you, John, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.'  
  
After that, Carter was a little choked up, but he managed to talk. 'I believe in soul mates, that there's one person we're supposed to find, one perfect person under the stars who is truly right for us. You are my soulmate and the love of my life, and I'll never love anyone else the way I love you.'  
  
Clearing his throat, as everybody was crying real tears, the justice of the peace spoke. 'Do you, Anna Catherine Del Amico, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?'  
  
'I do.'  
  
'Do you, John Truman Carter, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?'  
  
'I do.' Reaching for her hand, he slid the plain silver band onto it.   
  
'By the power vested in me, I pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.'  
  
Carter took his wife's face in his hands and kissed her, as the sun went down on a perfect end to what had been the perfect wedding.  
  
~~~~~~  
  
They returned to Chicago early, with Mark and Elizabeth, after seeing Kat off back to college, and went straight to the hospital. Since they weren't exactly sure how to do this, Mark offered to tell everybody. The three of them went to the admit desk and Mark called everyone round.  
  
'Okay, I don't know quite how to say this, but Dr Corday and I were called away for an unexpected event in the Caribbean a couple of days ago, and anyway it's this. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Drs John and Anna Carter.'  
  
The ER staff stood still for a moment before going insane.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Yeah, well, the original idea was to just have them go on holiday and come back like normal people, but hey, this happened. Thank you to The Hysterical Rhino aka Rhiannon for the title, which she gave to me ages ago. I stole Anna's line about her six-mile-wide romantic streak and needing a hospital to justify her existence from Mike Sugimoto's medical commentary for 'Middle of Nowhere'. Right, apologies. I don't know whether I'll get part 10 up before the end of the weekend. I will try, but obstacles stood in my way. Namely, I slept later than I intended to this morning, this was longer than I thought it would be, and I have a family commitment tomorrow (read: a christening that it might be an idea for me to go to, given that she's my goddaughter). I'll try. If not, look for it to be here by Monday night.  



	10. For Your Babies

For Your Babies  
  
'Hold up a minute,' Roland Carter interjected. 'You're telling me that you two are married?'  
  
'Pretty much.'  
  
He and Anna had been married for six weeks, if you were planning on being accurate about things. Carter was the happiest he had been in his whole life, and had been told more than once that the two of them were acting like a couple of teenagers. But he had been putting off telling his family, who had never even known that they were dating, much less engaged. Millicent knew, of course, but this was the first that any of the others had heard of it. And Roland and Josephine Carter were quickly managing to make their son irate.  
  
'Anna Del Amico? I'm sorry, son, but couldn't you have found someone a little more like us?'  
  
Carter's grip on his wife's hand tightened and he replied calmly, 'It's Anna Carter, and has been for a while now. And as far as someone "like you" is concerned, you could hardly have produced a son more different from you.'  
  
'You're right,' said Josephine sadly. 'Maybe if Bobby was still alive he would be a son that had turned out right.'  
  
'Look, Anna and I came here to invite you to the reception.' It had seemed only fair that since they had cheated their family and friends out of a wedding, they should do something to make it up to them. 'If you don't want to go, just say so.'  
  
'Fine. We don't want to go.'  
  
'Peachy.' They turned to leave and were headed for the door when Carter spun round. 'I'm sorry, I've been waiting to say this since I graduated med school.'  
  
'What would that be?' His father's icy sarcasm stung.   
  
'God, do you two have any idea what I do for a living?' he spat out. 'I work in an ER. In one day I can see things that most people go their whole lives without seeing. I save lives! Doesn't that make you even a tiny bit proud?' There was a dead silence, and he answered his own question. 'I guess not. Anna, let's go. We're not wanted here.'  
  
As he sat in the Jeep five minutes later, he let out a ragged breath and his hands clutched the steering wheel.   
  
'John, calm down. You can hardly drive home in the state you're in, and I don't particularly want to be stuck here all night, but just sit for a minute, okay?' His hands dropped down and she continued. 'I don't care what they think of me. So neither should you. Look, this way we can spend tomorrow with our friends. I mean, did you really want them to come in the first place?'  
  
'No,' he admitted. 'But it wasn't that bit that hurt.'  
  
'I know. I'm proud of you,' she added. 'If that means anything.'  
  
'Not just that. Okay, that most of all. Just - oh, everything. They're so bloody traditional, and that's the polite expression for it. It's the…'  
  
'Class status?'  
  
'Yeah.'  
  
'John, you were right. You and I, we save lives. Hundreds and hundreds of people owe their lives to you. They don't know what kind of a gift that is. You're an excellent doctor. And a good man.'  
  
'An instrument of god.' He laughed, a little shamefacedly.   
  
'A what?'  
  
'Just something a patient called me once. The Christmas after you left. Long story.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
Carter's head was spinning. They had decided on an evening reception on the premise that they wouldn't therefore get kicked out anytime before 2am, and that people would actually get drunk and let their hair down. Which they would be unlikely to do at four in the afternoon. However, an evening reception did not prevent him from having to meet Anna's family for the first time. They were nice, he didn't challenge that. But by some miracle, every last one of them was there and the result was your stereotypical Catholic family. Her seven younger brothers, her grandmother, her parents, and her seven thousand aunts and uncles. So far, he had managed to get his head round Aunt Tessa, the grandmother, and James, the oldest brother. For the rest, the names were all there, but he seemed unable to match them up with faces. He finally escaped to someone with whom he was on more familiar ground.  
  
'Hey, you guys. I'm so glad you could be here.'  
  
'We planned on being at the wedding,' Carol Hathaway admonished him. 'Trust you to never do anything the easy way.'  
  
'It probably was the easy way,' Doug pointed out. 'Imagine a wedding in Chicago with the Carter family. I notice that your parents aren't here.'  
  
'No,' Carter admitted. 'They only found out about Anna and me yesterday, and they… well, they didn't take it too well. I get the distinct impression that Gamma is the only one talking to me.'  
  
'So I would imagine. Don't worry about it, Carter. You guys are made for each other.'  
  
'Thanks, Doug.'  
  
Casting his eye over the room, Carter could see dozens of familiar faces. Abby and Luka… Kerry and Kim… Jeanie Boulet and her husband… Dave… Mark and Elizabeth… Randi… Susan Lewis…  
  
'Jerry?'  
  
'Hey Carter.'  
  
'What are you doing here?'  
  
'I've got my sources. Anyway, when did I ever miss a party?'  
  
'Um, never, if I remember correctly.' He was with people whose names he knew and his brain persisted in resembling mush. Jerry Markovic? He hadn't seen the guy in years. Not that he was complaining. Jerry and Malik could be counted on to liven things up a little, given half the chance. He had obviously run into Anna as well, because the next thing he knew she was at his elbow.   
  
'What is Jerry doing here?'  
  
'I just asked him the same question.' They didn't have time to get into an argument about it, because the music cut out and a voice said,  
  
'Hi. Uh, it's been requested that I make a speech, so here goes. I see a few unfamiliar faces, so I may as well introduce myself. I'm Kat, I'm Dr Carter's daughter.' She paused. 'I've known Carter and Anna for just over a year, and never really when they weren't together. At this stage, I find it difficult to imagine them without each other. I did know my dad for just a few weeks before he started dating Anna, and one night just before she came back to Chicago, he told me that he was like Vivien Ward, the Julia Roberts character from the film Pretty Woman. He wanted the fairytale. I think that he and Anna have found that in each other.' She picked up her glass. 'To the bride and groom.'  
  
'To the bride and groom.'  
  
'Right. I'm almost done, but I have a request for a song. For Your Babies by Simply Red, and it's from Anna Carter to her husband.'  
  
You've got that look again  
The one I hoped I had when I was a lad  
Your face is just beaming  
Your smile got me boasting, my pulse roller-coastering  
Anyway the four winds that blow  
They're gonna send me sailing home to you  
Or I'll fly with the force of a rainbow  
The dream of gold will be waiting in your eyes  
You know I'd do most anything you want  
Hey I, I try to give you everything you need  
I can see that it gets to you  
  
I don't believe in may things  
But in you I do  
  
Her faith is amazing  
The pain that she goes through contained in the hope for you  
Your whole world has changed  
The years spent before seem more cloudy than blue  
In many ways your baby's controlling  
When you haven't laid down for days  
For the poor no time to be thinking  
They're too busy finding ways  
You know I'd do most anything you want  
Hey I, I try to give you everything you need  
I'll see that it gets to you  
I don't believe in many things  
But in you I do  
  
You know I'd do most anything you want  
Everyday I, I try to give you everything you need  
We'll always be there for you  
I don't believe in many things  
But in you I do  
  
As the song ended, Carter looked into his wife's eyes. 'Did what I think happened just happen?'  
  
As a reply, she put a picture into his hand and, as he gazed at it, his mouth dropped open. 'Are - are we…' She nodded. 'Oh, my god. Anna…'  
  
'What?'  
  
'Thank you.'  
  
'For what?'  
  
'For being there. For making me the happiest man in the world. For everything.' Staring down at the ultrasound, he said shakily, 'We're going to have a baby, Anna.'  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Yay! I fulfilled my promise and got it done by the end of the weekend. Technical point: I finally finished getting this chapter down on paper at 1am. I must be freaking mad. As I said, the song was Simply Red, For Your Babies. I don't know whether this band is known in America, but suspend belief. Part 11, coming real soon now. Tuesday night, hopefully.  



	11. (Everything I Do) I Do It For You

(Everything I Do) I Do It For You  
  
It was August. Temperatures in Chicago had hit record levels, and it was swelteringly hot even at this hour of the morning. And John Carter was suffering from the effects of his wife being four-and-a-half months pregnant. He was returning from the 24-hour convenience store, where he had over the last few weeks become very good friends with the guy working the night shift, armed with a pint of Ben and Jerry's New York Fudge ice cream. He was dying for caffeine, but neither of them was drinking it for the duration of her pregnancy. Nine times out of ten he would get up in the morning to find his wife's head down the toilet. But most of all, he was hopping with excitement and wished that the next five months would hurry up and disappear. If he was suffering, it was nothing compared to what Anna was going through, for which reason he put up with her cravings without laughing too much at some of the stranger requests.   
  
Sliding his key into the door, he tried to be quiet so that he wouldn't wake up Kat. Or any of his neighbours for that matter. They tended to be reasonably understanding, but at four-thirty in the morning he thought that it might be better not to push his luck. To his surprise, Kat was in the kitchen, and she looked as surprised as he felt.  
  
'Dad? Where've you been?'  
  
'Oh.' He looked down at the plastic shopping bag. 'The K-Mart. Anna got hungry for ice cream.'  
  
'Well, she's asleep now.' His daughter flicked over a page in her book.   
  
'She's asleep?' He dropped the bag on the table. 'Oh great. Anyway, what are you doing up?'  
  
'Couldn't sleep. I'm on at six, not much point in going back to bed.' Kat was volunteering in the ER during her summer vacation. 'You?'  
  
'Seven.' He yawned. 'I'll come in with you, I'll never get back to sleep now, not in this heat. Is it any cooler in Boston?'  
  
'Hard to imagine it being hotter.' She got up. 'I'm gonna go take a shower, get dressed.'  
  
'Okay.' Finding a pen, he wrote a note to Anna, telling her that he had gone into work early, the ice cream - if she still wanted it - was in the freezer, and she should ring him at the hospital if she had any more nausea. Since the wedding reception, he had turned into a mother hen almost overnight, and no matter how much Abby Kovac and Janet Coburn tried to tell him that morning sickness was part of the deal, he worried about Anna constantly, and the result was that she spent half her time fending him off.  
  
When he got to the hospital, the place was so flooded with patients that he barely had time to spare his wife a thought before she came on at nine.  
  
'Hey.' She tapped him on the shoulder and he half turned round from suturing a head lac.  
  
'Hi. You get sick this morning?'  
  
'No, mom! I did not get sick this morning. I did, however, eat the ice cream. Thank you.'  
  
'What, all of it?'  
  
'No. Most of it.' She laughed at his expression. 'Hey, I'm pregnant, it's allowed. Do we have any kids for me to see?'  
  
'It's summer, ma'am, you have a waiting list.'  
  
'Terrific,' she muttered sarcastically, and went off to see the first of her finger splinters and wrist fractures.   
  
'She your wife?' asked the guy whose forehead gash he was sewing up.  
  
'Yeah.' Carter still experienced a glow of pride whenever he said that. He still woke up in the morning and couldn't believe that she had agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. Pulling the drape off the man's head, his wedding ring glinted in the sun. 'Mr Sauber, you are done.'  
  
'Thank you, doctor.'  
  
'You have a good day, sir.'  
  
'Carter?' Haleh stopped outside the exam room. 'You do know that Mrs Roberts in curtain three is still waiting on transport, right?'  
  
'Still?' He pulled off his gloves. 'Transport must be backed up. Right, thanks Haleh, I got it.' Rather than spending another hour hanging around waiting for someone to show up, he waylaid his daughter. 'Kat, curtain three, got a little transport job for you. She's kinda old. She was supposed to be in Radiology an hour ago.'  
  
'I'm on it.'  
  
A good point about it being summer, other than the fact that the never ending snow had at last disappeared, was that there were more volunteers around in the daytime, which meant that at least labs got taken to the lab and patients actually occasionally got transported to where they were supposed to be.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
'Hi, I'm looking for Dr Del Amico.'  
  
'Dr Del Amico?' Frank's face creased into a frown. 'You mean Dr Carter?'  
  
'Um, yes, of course.' Max Rosher's lips tightened. So, his girlfriend had not only gotten him put in jail and lost him his job and his license, she had married that Carter scum. Stuttering, he tried to cover his mistake. 'I thought she still practised under her maiden name.'  
  
'Nope. Down the hall, the paediatric ER. Just look for the long line of kids.'  
  
'Thanks.' He was halfway down the hall when Carter bumped into him. Absorbed in some lab results, he barely took in the guy's features and was back at admitting before realizing that he knew him vaguely but couldn't place him. Meanwhile, Max had gone into the paeds ER unheeded, where Anna, her endless flow of patients having trickled off somewhat, was catching up on a bit of paperwork. His eyes narrowed as he took in the flash of silver on her left hand, the swollen abdomen, and the sparkle in her eyes.  
  
'You slut.'  
  
'Max?' Anna drew in her breath sharply. 'What are you doing in Chicago?'  
  
'Looking for you. So.' His voice was cool, angry, mocking her. 'You married him. You got yourself pregnant and you married him.'  
  
'The other way round, actually.'  
  
'Yeah, whatever.'  
  
'What do you want here, Max?'  
  
'You?'  
  
'What about me? I've got a new life, I'm happy, and I'm having a baby. I owe you nothing.'  
  
'You owe me everything.'  
  
'You - raped - me!' she shrieked. He lunged for her and missed, and she kicked the door open, yelling down the hall. 'Security!'  
  
Someone was there before security. Mark had been going through charts and had casually remarked, 'Did I just see Max Rosher back there?'  
  
It had been enough for Carter's feet to hit the ground running, and as Max turned round, he hit him a well-aimed blow on the nose. It took Malik, Frank, Mark and Dave to pull him off, by which time he had given Max one hell of a battering and had acquired a gash underneath his eye. Struggling against the human restraints, he panted out,  
  
'Stay the hell away from my wife.'  
  
'Carter, shut up,' Mark snapped. 'And Dr Rosher…'  
  
'Mr Rosher,' Anna corrected him.  
  
'Get out of this hospital before I call the cops.' He released Carter and said, more gently, 'Are you okay?'  
  
'I'm fine.'  
  
'That's a pretty nasty gash. You want me to call plastics?'  
  
'No. You can do it. Get Anna checked out.'  
  
'Okay. Anna, who's your OB?'  
  
'Coburn, but…'  
  
'No buts.'  
  
'Fine.' Anna relented. 'But if you insisted on my being poked and prodded and ultrasounded, I'd a million times rather have Abby.'  
  
'Whatever you want. Chuny, would you call down Dr Kovac from OB? Carter, suture room. Go.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
The baby was fine. Abby, who didn't lecture her as Janet Coburn would have done, simply advised that it might be an idea to lay off the slap fights for a while and told Kat and Carter to stop fussing. Just as the ER was beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy, a call came through on the radio.  
  
'County base, this is Unit 57 incoming with an unconscious male in full arrest, probable OD. We found an empty vial of percocet on his person.'  
  
Carter and Anna exchanged glances, and Carter ran for the radio. 'Unit 57, this is County base, what's your ETA?'  
  
'Nine minutes.'  
  
'Haleh, check and see if we're missing any percocet. Doris, can you give us a description?'  
  
'Male, mid to late thirties. Driver's license and donor card ID him as Max Rosher from Philadelphia.'  
  
'County base, signing off.' Carter clicked the radio off. 'Prep trauma two…'  
  
'You two,' Mark indicated Carter and Anna, 'I want you to stay out of there. Especially you, Carter. You're in no fit state to be objective about this one. No arguments. I know, remember.'  
  
Besides Elizabeth, Carter had been the only person that Mark had ever told about Derek Fossen. It was over four years ago now, and the man was alive and in jail the last they heard, but Mark never forgot how terrified he had been at what he had almost done and became. Respecting his point, Carter nodded.  
  
Max certainly appeared to have done the job properly. He had taken enough of the drug to kill a healthy elephant. He was brought in still in full arrest, had two seizures, and eventually Mark gave the order to stop CPR.  
  
'Asystole.'  
  
'Time of death, 14:32. Send him down to the morgue, call the coroner.' He pulled his gloves off. 'I'll go find Carter and Anna, let them know.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
A week later, the two of them stood in a Chicago cemetery. The gravestones around them bore sentiments and were decorated with flowers, but the one they were in front of was plain, inscribed simply,   
  
'Max Rosher  
1967 - 2005'  
  
Her hair blowing in the summer breeze, Anna Carter let her hand brush the bump beneath her skirt and squeezed her husband's fingers.  
  
'Let's go home.'  
  
Look into my eyes, you will see   
What you mean to me   
Search your heart, search your soul   
And when you find me there you'll search no more   
  
Don't tell me it's not worth trying for   
You can't tell me it's not worth dying for   
You know it's true   
Everything I do - I do it for you   
  
Look into my heart, you will find   
There's nothing there to hide   
Take me as I am, take my life   
I would give it all, I would sacrifice   
  
Don't tell me it's not worth fighting for   
I can't help it, there's nothing I want more   
You know it's true   
Everything I do - I do it for you   
  
There's no love, like your love   
And no other, could give more love   
There's nowhere, unless you're there   
All the time, all the way   
  
Oh, you can't tell me it's not worth trying for   
I can't help it, there's nothing I want more   
I would fight for you, I'd lie for you   
Walk the wire for you, yeah I'd die for you   
  
You know it's true   
Everything I do - I do it for you  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Hi, guys. Part 11 of 13 up, earlier than I thought it would be, and profuse apologies to any fans of Max Rosher. Bryan Adams does not belong to me, and neither does his song. Neither does Ben and Jerry's ice cream - or, as I already pointed out, Noah Wyle - but hey, I can dream, can't I. (See, I don't have pregnancy cravings, I just have plain cravings) To give you all some idea of time scale, I'm going to Greece on Thursday afternoon, and I plan to get this whole thing done and posted before I go, so look for Chapter 12 and the Epilogue/Chapter 13 to be up here by Wednesday night at the latest. Chapter 12 might be up by tomorrow.   



	12. When A Child Is Born

When A Child Is Born  
  
Kat Carter picked up her case and canvas bag as the train decelerated and began pulling into Union Station. It was Christmas Eve and she was going home for a three week vacation. Classes at Harvard had ended a few days ago, but she had stayed behind to finish some things up, and her eventual attempted departure and inconveniently coincided with a custodial rail staff strike. She had been stuck in Boston Memorial Station for the last two days. Her dad had offered to come collect her from Union Station, but on hearing that her half-sibling was now two weeks overdue, had told him to stay put, she was nineteen years old and perfectly capable of hailing a cab.  
  
Pulling her case out of the trunk fifteen minutes later, Kat handed the driver a twenty and told him to keep the change. She selected a key from the heavy bunch in her pocket and opened the door. The first thing that met her eyes was Anna trying to get off the sofa and muttering obscenities under her breath.   
  
'Anna?' She hurried into the living room. 'What do you need?'  
  
'I got it.'  
  
'No, really. You should be resting. What do you want?'  
  
'Okay. I need to go to the bathroom.'  
  
Kat put her stuff down on the floor. 'Yeah, okay, that is all you.'  
  
'I thought so. I feel like an elephant.'  
  
'Still showing no signs of moving, huh?'  
  
'Unfortunately, not.' Anna was by this point shouting through the bathroom door. 'I'll be going into labor in the middle of Christmas dinner at this rate.'  
  
'Where's my dad?' she asked, pulling her coat off.  
  
'He had to go into work; he left his cell phone and his wallet in his locker. Oh, but, um, first he was going to pick some food up for tomorrow. He's cooking.'  
  
'You think that was a wise move?'  
  
'Probably not.' Her voice changed. 'Uh-oh.'  
  
'Everything okay?'  
  
'I think my water just broke.'  
  
Kat looked up sharply. 'How can you tell? You're peeing.'  
  
'Well, yes, I was. But then I finished and stood up, and now I think my water's broke.'  
  
'Have you had any contractions?'  
  
'I don't think so.'  
  
'Any back pain?' Kat was trying very hard to make it sound like she wasn't panicking.  
  
'For the last four months. Worse in the last couple of days.'  
  
'Okay, great. Anna, get your coat, we're going to the hospital.' Grabbing the nearest phone extension, she dialed the ER. 'Hi, Randi, it's Kat. Is my dad there?'  
  
'No.'  
  
'Well, he's coming in to pick up some things he left in his locker. When he gets there, do not let him leave.'  
  
'Okay… oh, is it time?'  
  
'I think so.' She slammed the phone down and looked for her car keys. She left the Porsche in Chicago while she was in college, as in Boston she didn't go anywhere far enough to merit driving. 'Anna! Let's go!'  
  
Even in a fast car sticking just under the speed limit, it soon became painfully obvious that Christmas Eve traffic in the middle of the city was no laughing matter. Somehow, despite the fact that the journey time from the apartment to County had doubled, they still managed to arrive before Carter, and Luka and Deb loaded Anna into a wheelchair, talking fast.  
  
'Who's your OB?' Deb asked.  
  
'Coburn.'  
  
'Dr Coburn's in Wisconsin with her family for Christmas,' Luka supplied helpfully.  
  
'Then page Abby,' Anna snapped.  
  
'You don't want an OB attending?' he asked dubiously.  
  
'I could be at this a while,' she replied. 'Besides, I'm sure John and Abby have delivered enough babies between them to handle this one. Just send him up to L&D when he gets here, okay?'  
  
'Okay.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
'Dr Carter!' In her regular OB visits during the last nine months, and as an on-call paediatrician for deliveries, Anna had got to know the desk staff pretty well. 'Everything okay?'  
  
'I'm having a baby!' she said irritably. Turning to Kat, she hissed at her, 'Can I please get out of this thing? I feel like a circus animal?'  
  
'Hospital policy,' her stepdaughter said. 'Quit arguing.'  
  
'Who's your OB?' the clerk asked. 'Dr Coburn, right? She's…'  
  
'In Wisconsin, I know. The ER docs are paging Dr Kovac for me.'  
  
'The senior resident?'  
  
'She was an OB nurse for eight years and my husband will be here shortly. I think she can manage.'  
  
'Whatever you say, Doc.'  
  
'Hey, Anna.' Abby Kovac came up behind them. 'Where's John?'  
  
'God knows. He was coming into the ER to pick some stuff up, Luka said he'd send him up.'  
  
'Okay.' Taking over the wheelchair from Kat, they walked down the hall. 'Have you had any contractions yet?'  
  
'One. About a half-hour ago.'  
  
How dilated were you on your last OB visit?'  
  
'Three centimetres two days ago.'  
  
'Well, we'll check you out and do an ultrasound, but it sounds like you might be in for a long night. That tends to happen with first deliveries. Do you want an epidural?'  
  
'No.' Carter had said she was mad, but she had been adamant that she was going to do this naturally.  
  
'Okay. I'd have it, especially after last time…' When Erica had been born, it had happened too quickly for Abby to even be offered analgesia. 'But hey, it's your call.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
Carter parked the Jeep in the garage. He was only planning to be in the hospital for five minutes, but remembered that Mark had parked in the bay for thirty seconds and had been towed. He had already been out for over an hour more than he had said he would be, and was in such a hurry that he failed to notice his daughter's car parked in Anna's spot as he jogged past it. He walked into the ER and was surprised to be stopped by Deb as he had his hand on the door into the lounge.  
  
'Carter, hey, wait up. Anna's here.'  
  
'Anna is? What's wrong with her?'  
  
'What do you think?'  
  
'She's having the baby?' His face lit up like a kid at Christmas and she laughed.  
  
'She's upstairs in L&D with Kat and Abby.'  
  
'Abby?'  
  
'Coburn's taken off to Wisconsin for the holidays, Anna asked for Abby. Go!'  
  
He didn't need to be told twice. Dismissing the elevators as too slow, he bounded up the stairs and fell at the desk. His face wasn't as familiar up here as Anna's was, and the clerk gave him a funny look.  
  
'Name, please?'  
  
'I'm Dr Carter. My wife…'  
  
'Down the hall, third on the left. Dr Kovac is in with her.'  
  
On his way he crashed into his daughter, who was leaving the delivery room, almost knocking her over. 'Kat? How's it going?'  
  
'She's four centimetres dilated, she's had two contractions, and I think she's starting to reconsider the natural childbirth thing.' Kat and Carter had spent the whole of Thanksgiving trying to talk her out of it, and he replied,  
  
'See, how come two contractions make her think about doing what I've been telling her to do for months?'  
  
'It hurts, that's how come,' she said. 'And you would want to be completely knocked out.'  
  
'Maybe,' he conceded.   
  
'Definitely,' Kat corrected. 'Men are wimps. I'm going to get coffee, you want anything?'  
  
'Coffee would be good. Maybe a sandwich.'  
  
'Sure. Go on in. She's starting to think that something awful happened to you.'  
  
~~~~~~  
  
By nine-thirty that night, with things progressing almost painfully slowly, Carter was out cold on a gurney. He had spent the last month hanging off the end of the bed, as it was just too small for the three of them, and thus he hadn't been getting the best nights' sleep. At eleven-thirty he became aware of a sharp finger poking him in between the shoulder blades, and a voice yelling.  
  
'Dad! Wake up!'  
  
'Uuhgh.'  
  
'Move your butt.'  
  
He finally opened is eyes and they drifted over to the other side of the room, where it had become clear that it was very much all stations go.   
  
'What's happening?' he asked, staggering to his feet.  
  
It was Abby who answered him. 'She's at ten centimetres and we're almost ready to push.'  
  
'About friggin' time,' Anna grunted.  
  
'Okay, Anna, on the next contraction push as hard as you can. Carter, Kat, grab a pair of gloves and get yourselves over here.'  
  
'How long does this take?' Anna panted.  
  
'Depends. It shouldn't be too long, I don't think.'  
  
The conversation was cut off abruptly as Anna's next contraction came along. She had stuck to her guns and refused an epidural, and the result was that she grabbed the nearest solid object - Kat's hand - and squeezed it, drawing a squawk from Kat. An hour of pushing later, Abby finally said,  
  
'Okay, this next one should get the head out. Carter, get down there. You're doing this.'  
  
'Me?'  
  
'Yes, you. You're the father, you're an ER attending, and you've done this before.'  
  
'Right.'  
  
'Just don't tell Coburn that I let you. Okay, Anna, push. Ten - nine - eight- seven - six…'  
  
'Head's out,' Carter announced. 'Anna, honey, don't push.'  
  
'This next one should do it.' It was something that Kat was happy to hear, as her hand became very much the worse for wear. Abby positioned herself behind Carter. 'Okay, shoot.'  
  
The warm, messy body slipped into Carter's hands and it set up a cry.  
  
'It's a boy,' he said. He was crying, and as he cut the cord, Abby asked,  
  
'So, do you have a name picked out?'  
  
They looked at each other, and said together, 'Malcolm.'  
  
'Merry Christmas.' Almost on cue, someone at the desk started playing Christmas carols and it came over the PA.  
  
A ray of hope, flickers in the sky  
A tiny star lights up way up high  
All across the land dawns a brand new morn  
This comes to pass when a child is born  
  
The silent wish sails the seven seas  
The winds of change whisper in the trees  
And the walls of doubt crumble toss and torn  
This comes to pass when a child is born  
  
A rosy hue settles all around  
You get the feel, you're on solid ground  
For a spell or two no one seems forlorn  
This comes to pass when a child is born  
  
And all of this happens because the world is waiting  
Waiting for one child: black, white, yellow, no one knows  
But the child that will grow up and turn tears to laughter  
Hate to love, war to peace,   
Everyone to everyone's neighbour   
Misery and suffering will be words to be forgotten forever.  
  
It's all a dream an illusion now  
It must come true sometime soon, somehow  
All across the land dawns a brand new morn  
This comes to pass when a child is born  
  
Abby took the tiny body from his daddy. 'Welcome to the world, Malcolm.'  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Kinda unseasonal, I know. The song is 'When A Child Is Born', written by I don't know who. Zacar, Dario Bembo, and Fred Day. Whoever they are, I don't own them. Nor do I own Michael Ball, the only person who I've ever heard sing the damn thing. The epilogue is half written and will be up sometime tomorrow night, if not sooner.  



	13. Epilogue - Welcome To The World

Epilogue: Welcome To The World  
  
Anna was asleep. So was Kat, who, deciding that it was too late and she was too beat to drive home, had crashed in an exam room in the ER. Carter was wide awake, watching over his son. Quietly, he began to talk to the sleeping baby.  
  
'Hey, Malcolm, I'm your dad. You don't look like me at all, though your mommy thinks you have my nose. You've got her hair, and her blue eyes, and you're the sweetest baby either of us has ever seen. I took you down to the ER before, and you've got dozens of willing aunts and uncles who think so too. You've got lots in Philadelphia as well, that's where your mommy comes from. And tomorrow morning, I have to call Uncle Doug and Aunt Carol in Seattle to tell them about you. In my family, we have ways of screwing kids up, but you got so many people looking out for you that I can't see you being able to go far wrong.  
  
'You have a big sister too. Her name is Kat, and she's nineteen. She's not mommy's daughter, but that's a long story that I'll tell you someday. It doesn't seem to make much difference to how they get along, and she thinks you're adorable.  
  
'Your mommy and daddy are doctors. We work here, downstairs in the ER. I've been here for over ten years, and your mom for almost two. She was here for a year a while ago, but she went back to Philadelphia to help set up a paediatric ER. She broke my heart when she left. I don't care about that anymore, because she came back to me and she gave me you.  
  
'There's some things you should know about me. My dad is one of the richest men in Chicago, but he doesn't like me very much. He wanted me to grow up to be a rich white guy, he didn't want me to be a doctor, and he didn't want me to marry your mom. He hasn't spoken to me since we got married, for almost a year now. Gamma's great. She's going to be thrilled to have a great-grandson. What I really need to tell you is this. I had a friend named Lucy, and almost six years ago, we were stabbed by one of her patients. Lucy died and I survived, but I got addicted to narcotics. I've been completely clean now for five years and one day, and I… it's scary to hope too much, and I don't wanna break any promises, but I will do everything in my power to make sure that I never go back on drugs. It's not something I'd like to go through again.  
  
'Your name is Malcolm Julian Carter. Your mom and I chose it together. Malcolm is after a man who was a very good friend to her. He was called Malcolm Crowe, and he was a child psychiatrist at the Childrens' Hospital of Philadelphia. That's a feelings doctor. Your mommy says that he was a very special man. I wish I had known him. Julian is after your sister's mom. Her name was Julia, and she was my first girlfriend. She died almost two years ago. Carter is our surname. Mine and your mommy's. Our names are actually John and Anna, but most people do call me Carter. Only a few people call me John, like mommy and Aunt Deb and Aunt Abby. Maybe you're supposed to call Aunt Deb, Aunt Jing-Mei. I don't know, she gets kind of mad when people call her Deb. I guess I'm the exception.   
  
'Most of all, I want you to know how much I love you. You, your mom, and Kat are the best things to happen in my life since forever, and the three of you have made me happier than I ever thought I could be. You give me a reason to keep going, and I honestly don't know how I made it through the last thirty-odd years without you guys.  
  
'I love you, Malc.'  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
It's over, and I don't know what else to say. Last November, when I started the original story, I never thought I would actually make it this far. I had no idea where I was going. And after nine months and 13 chapters, there are a few people I should probably thank.  
  
- Rhiannon Perkins and Victoria Houghton, my fellow fanficcers  
- Laura Semmens, Karen Scauzillo, Paula Graves, and PD Fitzgerald, for the alt.tv.er episode summaries.  
- Triggums, for her 'First Aid Kit For ER Fanfiction Writers and RPG Players'. Or summat like that.  
- People whose songs I nicked  
- Warner Bros, Amblin Television, Constant C, and Michael Crichton, for being nice and not sueing me  
- Bill Gates for the use of his computer system (to placate Rhiannon, I will say that purple iMacs rock)  
- Everyone who has reviewed this, thank you so much. It really means a lot.  
- John Carter & Anna Del Amico (and Noah Wyle & Maria Bello), without whom this story would never have   
happened.  
  
I feel that I have to say this. I remember, about seven or eight years ago, in creative writing lessons, my teacher told us that we should be starting to write stories that were 100 words long. I mean, how long did that feel like, writing a 100 word story took forever. And I've ended up writing a piece of fiction that's over seventeen thousand words long. Little did we know.  



End file.
